"hath seen the Father." The design of his coming into this world was to bring back apostate creatures to his Father; "to make reconciliation for iniquity" by the sacrifice of himself upon the cross; and thus to remove all those impediments which spring from the character of God to acceptance in his sight, and to restore them to the enjoyment of his eternal favour. He gave himself a sacrifice on the altar of justice, that a free passage might be opened to the favour of his heavenly Father without any impeachment of the Divine character; "that he might be just, and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus."

What movements are in your minds, my brethren, with respect to this great object at this time? Are they stationary, or are they moving in a right or a wrong direction? Are you under the guidance of Christ, seeking increased acquaintance with him, aspiring after higher degrees of resemblance to him, fixing your hopes more firmly upon his promises? Then all things will be favourable to you; "the world, or life, or death, things present, or things to come, all are yours." You have obeyed from the heart the call of the gospel; you have forsaken the world; have become dead to it before you are called to leave it; and have laid up treasure in heaven, having trusted your souls for safety to the Divine Redeemer; "you know whom you have believed, and are persuaded that he is able to keep that which you have committed unto him until that day." But if your minds are engaged in a contrary direction; if you are seeking happiness in the

things of this world, living in the neglect of God, never raising your thoughts to the contemplation of the Supreme Good,-if, having rejected the great salvation, you are content to lie under the weight of unacknowledged, and therefore unpardoned, guilt,- yet, bear with me while I remind you that you must have a meeting with God; you must see the face of that Divine Being whose authority you have spurned, and feel the anger of that Divine Redeemer whom you have rejected. You will, if you persist in this course, hear him pronounce the fearful sentence, "Those mine enemies that would not have me to reign over them, bring them hither and slay them before me:" "Depart from me, ye that work iniquity."

Blessed be God, there are those now present who are placing their affections habitually on the great Supreme, and uniting themselves, more and more closely, to him by faith in the Son of God. Let such persons rejoice in the prospects before them. The interruptions which arise from your corporeal state will speedily terminate; the flesh shall then no longer lust against the spirit, nor the spirit against the flesh; but you will "do the things that you would." You have preferred the interests of the mind to those of the body; the service of Jesus Christ, and the prospects of eternity, to all sublunary good. You are approaching nearer and nearer to the Chief Good; you are hungering and thirsting after righteousness; and you shall certainly be satisfied. God approves your choice, and will assist your infirmities; "he will

strengthen you with all might by his Spirit in your inner man;" will "work in you to will and to do of his own good pleasure;" and enable you to "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling."

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They that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; they that sow to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." Let us make continual progress in christian virtue. Every act of sin has a tendency to misery. Every effort to subdue corruption, and to live to the will of God, is a seed which, by God's grace, will bring forth fruit to everlasting life. By patient continuance in well doing, let us seek for glory, honour, and immortality; for to such God will assuredly recompense eternal life: but to those that are disobedient, and do not obey the truth, "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish." "On the wicked he will rain fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup."*

II.

THE GLORY OF GOD IN CONCEALING.

PROVERBS XXV. 2.—It is the glory of God to conceal a thing.† [PREACHED AT CAMBRIDGE, SEPTEMBER, 1826.]

It is difficult to say whether the glory of God appears more in what he displays, or in what he

Rom. ii. 7-9; Ps. xi. 6.

From the Notes of Joshua Wilson, Esq.

conceals, of his operations and designs. Were he to conceal every thing from our view, it would be impossible that any glory could result to him from the sentiments and actions of his creatures. From entire ignorance nothing could arise, no medium of intercourse could be established between the creature and the Creator. In the total absence of the knowledge of God, religion must be totally excluded and unknown. But it is by a partial communication of himself, which the Divine Being might, if he pleased, in various degrees extend and increase beyond the present measure, that he has in the highest degree consulted his honour and manifested his wisdom. If there were no light, we should sink into a state of irreligious doubt and despair; if there were no darkness, we should be in danger of losing that reverential sense of his infinite majesty so essential to religion, and of impiously supposing that the Almighty is such an one as ourselves. But a temperature of mingled light and obscurity, a combination of discovery and concealment, is calculated to produce the most suitable impressions of the divine excellence on the minds of fallen creatures. When God was pleased to favour his ancient people with a supernatural display of his presence, by a visible symbol, during their journey through the wilderness, it wore this twofold aspect: it was a pillar of cloud and of fire, dark in the daytime and luminous in the night; and when he conducted them through the Red Sea, he turned the bright side of the cloud towards the camp of

Israel, and the gloomy side towards the Egyptians by whom they were pursued.*

When he descended on Mount Sinai, the token of his presence was a mass of thick and dark clouds, penetrated at intervals by flashes of lightning. On the third day, in the morning, we are informed, there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount; and, it is added, "the mount was altogether in a smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace." When Solomon had finished his temple, the manifestation which the Deity made of himself, in taking possession of it and consecrating it to his service, was of the same character. No sooner had the priests gone out of the holy place, than the cloud filled the house of the Lord; and "the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord." The first indication of the divine presence was the overspreading of thick darkness, which afterwards subsided, and unfolded itself gradually, till it terminated in an insufferable splendour. Upon observing this, Solomon, at the commencement of his celebrated prayer, used these words: "The Lord said that he would dwell in the thick darkness." If God dwells in light inaccessible, he equally makes darkness his dwelling-place,-"his pavilion dark waters and thick clouds of the sky." "Clouds and darkness,"

* Exod. xiv. 19, 20.

† 1 Kings viii. 12.